20 Jul 2014

Mandatory Backup tools for Rooted user

If you are a rooted user on Android, these kinds of tools are mandatory to have, to enjoy a peace of mind.
Basically, these tools have saved me a significant trouble by
enabling me to restore to earlier "good working" condition in a few mins
of time. Inside just a matter of few clicks, the whole system is
restored and device is fully functioning again, as if nothing ever
happened.

You wont imagine how many times I have softer-bricked my phone over the years, testing, retesting new apps and hacks.In this guide, I’ll show you some tools and the simple steps to take a backup yourself and storing it safely.

1) Nandroid backup
A) Taking Nandroid backup (native way)
Step 1. Check the prerequisites: Your Android device has in order to be rooted and have a custom healing tool like AOKP or CWM. If you havent rooted your phone, kindly check my post on how to do so here
Step 2. Go inside healing mode by booting a device into bootloader. In many of the devices, this do be done-by turning it on holding down that volume-up button, menu button and run button together or volume-up switch and power. Check on internet, which one works for your device. When you have complete that, your device will reboot into the custom recovery.
Step 3. Once you are inside the recovery, follow the below steps

CWM:
Get to “Backup and regain”
Choose “Backup”
Your device should perform the backup now
After successful completion, select “Go back” and choose “Reboot system now” to reboot ones device.

Step 4. Backup part is now done, however I recommend to store a copy of the backup on PC, just whenever anything happens on the phone. Even if you lost your phone and bought another one, all you need to do is root it and then transfer the backup from PC to external card and restore it.
Step 5. Restore using your Nandroid backup: Like earlier, boot into recovery mode and select “Backup” or “Backup then restore” in CWM and choose the restore option. You have options to restore particular partitions, however leave it to defaut if you are not sure. Once restoration is completeed, reboot your device and you’re done.

B) Online Nadroid Backup
This is another tool where you can do all of the above steps without having to reboot. It comes along with a Nandroid Manager with which, you can restore data, apps, home screens, SMS, call logs and so on ONLY or whole of that it. And the best part is without taking a reboot.

Online Nandroid backup

Settings

Backups

Restore options

Restore options2

Recovery options

2) Titanium backup
This is the best backup tool for Android i have ever seen for rooted users. The only difference in backup anywhere between Nandroid Backup and Titanium is that Nandroid takes backup of the OS and its partitions, whereas Titanium backup
takes care for the applications (system and user both of the). It is the innumerable set of features that a person can do with it, that works magic towards users. Some of them has been listed down below
per) Maintain many copies concerning backups per app (history length can get chosen)
b) You can encrypt your bacup, transfer it to another device.
c) Take Backup/restore out of SMS, MMS, call log, bookmarks and Wi-Fi networks at the portable XML format!
d) Batch verification of your backups
e) Dalvik cache cleaner can free up precious internal memory and App freezer will disable an app (furthermore make it invisible) without un-installing it
f) Convert users apps to system apps and vice versa
g) Integrate system app and dalvik cache updates directly into your ROM
h) Create an "update.zip" file containing apps+data, which can be flashed in recovery mode to restore everything in one shot
i) Schedule backups upto 7 times a week each
j) Schedule synchronization of all your backups to Dropbox, Box and Google Drive and retrieving them later as seriously.
k) Change the device's Android ID, restore it from a back-up or after your factory reset
l) Protect backup against deletion, submit backup (to age-mail/cloud) and import it in 1 click
n) Backup→Verify→Un-install an app in one shot
And what else do you need?
Tip: What i generally do is I take per Nandroid Backup on Weekly/ regular Basis and Titanium backup on daily basis. Even suppose i have to flash return a backup one month back, i can recover the SMS, contacts, mails etc from Titanium backup till the previous day.